Before leaving the office, I asked Sophia whether I should warn the neighbors not to let anyone into the house.

“Tell them there is an access dispute and give them my office number,” she said.

“Don’t ask them to intervene physically.”

I called the neighbor who had sometimes collected packages for me.

She remembered seeing someone at the door but hadn’t known anything was wrong.

“I thought you arranged work while you were away,” she said.

“That’s what it would have looked like.”

She offered to send me the dates of the deliveries she remembered.